What? How? Why? The fricking thing only went on sale yesterday, and already one player’s managed to ding level 80. I’ve been playing most of today, having arduously just hit level 71 a moment ago, and even that’s enough to make my eyes scream and my brain weep. 80?

There’s no word from the player her/himself as yet, but Wowinsider theorise they had a pet Priest with them to make the journey that much easier. That I can believe, but it’s the actual time involved that confuses me. If they bought the copy at midnight on Tuesday and played solidly, that would have given them 30 hours all-told. Is that possible, WoW mathematicians? It doesn’t seem to be shenanigans, as we can all see the dedicated warlock’s armory profile. I’m sure she’s looking forward to a lonely week of having no-one to team up with up. But gratz’n’all.

My own second day in Northrend’s been a fairly WoW-standard one, though it does keep on throwing agreeably inventive quests at me. I turned into a hawk for a while, I wore a golem suit and I took a ride on a giant harpoon. Then I ran WoTLK’s first two dungeons, neither of which especially impressed me. There’s some nice graphical show-offery in the Nexus, but it all felt terribly familiar. As did the struggles to form a group for it. I know you’ve got to be precise for the later raids, but I’d hoped the early 5-man instances would be ameanable to a fairly mongrel group. Not so. It’s not just a matter of getting the right classes, but the right spec of the right classes, and of course players that pretty on the ball. There wasn’t too much wiping involved at least, but it was a right pig to sort out. Yeah, it’s a bit more sociable than WAR’s anonymous pile-ons, but they’re so much easier to orchestrate.

What I have noticed, though, is that Lich King is very much WoW reverting to type. The otherworldly, sci-fi elements of The Burning Crusade have been dialled back in favour of a straighter fantasy landscape, and while that sounds duller on paper, it really suits the game. Forests and ice floes feel a lot better suited to exploration than the more contrived, setpiecey alien environments of TBC.

I always like to picture those kinds of players on their death beds. They sit alone, surrounded by get well cards from their guildmates. They look back on their life and say “Hey, remember that time I hit level 80 in less than two days on that game no one remembers?”

There are diffent type of players, and a MMORPG able diffent types of gameplay. The Powergamer is like that. He, or she, will beat anything always, killing stuff in record time, and maximizing PX troughput to the max. And thats what a Powergamer make him/she happy.

I have some powergamers friends, and is like a virus, sadly enough because I also have all the other virus: griefer ,RP ,pvp and crafting. My favorite gameplay is Griefer/Roleplayer. Is kind of … playing Austin Powers, as Dr Evil.

@Phemox: It’s not a marketing trick. Blizzard were seriously pissed off about the (also French) guy who got to level 70 twenty-four hours after they released Burning Crusade, and promised that it wouldn’t happen again. They were right, they managed to forestall it for a whole three extra hours!

This was kind of inevitable, really – though this time I’m even more impressed, because the guy who did it in the Burning Crusade had a whole guild backing him up.

@fulis: I was just reading the background on that. He was using the mob-tagging method that was used when they had the race to level 70 in Burning Crusade. It seems odd that one GM said it was okay and another banned the entire team just before they were about to turn level 80. Sounds a bit like the Blizz GMs being a bit overly officious to me.

People are too down on this, I think. It’s a really impressive achievement, in my opinion. These people are taking gaming further towards a skill than you or I, and while we might not deem it healthy, I can’t say I’m not jealous. I can’t imagine what it’s like be that planned and organised. I’m happy with the hundreds of hours NOT spent in WoW, obviously, but to do something like that… well, it must feel pretty good.

I know you’ve got to be precise for the later raids, but I’d hoped the early 5-man instances would be ameanable to a fairly mongrel group. Not so. It’s not just a matter of getting the right classes, but the right spec of the right classes, and of course players that pretty on the ball.

I felt they were fairly forgiving, although I do all my grouping with guildies who I’ve played with a lot before. They’re perfectly possible to run with a DPS-specced tank or healer at least.

I’d recommend you to find a group for the Azjol’Nerub instance, it felt very different to me, it’s fast with lots of action. For extra comedy value our three damage dealers got locked out from the last boss fight and had to stand behind a gate watching as me (the healer) and the tank very, very slowly beat the last boss. The fact that two level 70 players can handle a level 72-74 5-man boss fight should be some indication of the difficulty. You still need a healer and a tank class for a group of course, and that’s a basic rule that’s so firmly rooted in the collective WoW consciousness that I doubt the developers would dare break it (sadly) ;)

70-80 in 27 hours? I got my tank to 71 and my healer a bit more than half way into 70 in a full day of playing. I did however spend much of the time running around marvelling at the view, giggling at walrus-people and /dancing with the opposite faction.

I was going to point out that this is obviously the “WotLK 15 minutes of fame” achievement, but then I spotted the sidebar ad for “Nyhm’s Warcraft Guide” and it’s obviously more than that – it’s a good advertising model too!

Following choreography is not, especially the kind which doesn’t require any significant physical or mental conditioning. WoW stopped being about skill when they began gutting it of all ambition in late 2004.

As a bit of an update, my brother told me that Nihilium and SK Gaming – the TBC-world leaders of content – have apparently cleared ALL PvE content already. Disturbing? Yes – but disturbing to who? Dedicated, hardcore players spending too much time and energy in a game, or disturbing that Blizzard developed content so easily destroyed?

I don’t think that it is disturbing that the best, professional (as in, paid money) players can finish the entry level raids quickly.

Especially since the first raid is actually a reboot of a vanilla wow raid which they all knew very well and they had plenty of time in beta to test and thoroughly plan each instance.

Previously Blizzard has been know to make inital raids really hard, including all sorts of bugs and gear checks to slow progression until they are ready with their next patch and their next lot of content. After the pro raiders beat the buggy hard content they would reduce the difficulty so everyone else can beat it too. This time they seem to have put it in at the correct (entry level) difficulty first time, hence the pro guilds shooting through it so fast.

You will hear the pro guilds talk about the original 25 man BC raids and how they contained the hardest encounters they had ever faced in their original conception. While the pro raiders might have loved those inital challenges, the rest of the world certainly did not.

Blizzard just needs to have a service where you pay $50 to start a level 80 character. With all of the bonuses you get to leveling (300% XP boost if you group with a referred character, etc.) this will probably become a reality in the near future.